PART III

HOLISM AND THE PUBLICIST STANDPOINT IN PHILOSOPHY

SUMMARY

When the conclusions of physicists are supplemented by the enquiries

of the biologist we are led to a schematization of experience which

permits us to discuss the nature of matter and life on a neutral

ground. This neutral ground is the _public world_ of science. It

represents what is significant for the purpose of discourse. Idealistic

philosophers have assumed the nature of reality as the goal of

philosophy; but the concept of reality is essentially equivocal. For

the purpose of discourse we have to assume that the neutral ground

is the real thing. In private we are at liberty to reject this view.

Temperament decides which of these alternatives we adopt. There is

therefore no hope of arriving at universal agreement in discussing the

nature of reality. To the introvert reality resides in the domain of

mystic experience. To the extrovert the public world is the nearest

approach to a complete representation of reality which our limited

range of receptor organs permits us to construct. The belief that

philosophy can settle the nature of reality, and that it is possible to

arrive at universal conclusions independently of the methods of science

and mathematics arose in the period of decadence of Greek philosophy.

It developed in modern Europe under the influence of ecclesiasticism.

Freed from the bondage of clerical control, philosophy must undertake

the more modest task of discussing what characteristics of belief

determine their communicability or _publicity_, and indicating how the

problems of existence can be resolved into their public and private

components. From this standpoint educational theory must be based on

a recognition of the respective spheres of _publicity_ and _privacy_.

Organized religious belief and ritual is based on a confusion between

the two. The same confusion exists in the pragmatist philosophy.

IX. BIOLOGY AND HUMANISM

“But the mortallest enemy unto knowledge, and that which hath

done the greatest execution upon truth, hath been a peremptory

adhesion unto authority; and more especially, the establishing of

our belief upon the dictates of antiquity. For (as every capacity

may observe) most men, of ages present, so superstitiously do look

upon ages past, that the authorities of the one exceed the reasons

of the other. Whose persons indeed far removed from our times,

their works, which seldom with us pass uncontrolled, either by

contemporaries, or immediate successors, are now become out of the

distance of envies; and, the farther removed from present times,

are conceived to approach the nearer unto truth itself. Now hereby

methinks we manifestly delude ourselves, and widely walk out of the

track of truth.”--Sir Thomas Browne, _Pseudodoxia Epidemica_

§1

Evolution does not enable us to make any spectacular predictions

which can be verified here and now. Its importance lies in satisfying

our curiosity about human origins in a manner consistent with the

present state of scientific knowledge. It provides a philosophical

framework for biological enquiry on the one hand and for our attitude

to the problem of human destiny on the other. From a purely technical

standpoint Darwin’s specific contribution to the evolutionary doctrine

was the hypothesis of natural selection. The hypothesis of natural

selection, in the form in which Darwin stated it, has been modified out

of all recognition to accommodate later enquiries into the nature of

heredity and variation. Such enquiries did not receive their impetus

from the _Origin of Species_. They followed the course prescribed by

Mendel’s experiments upon the kitchen pea. How then has it come to

pass that Darwin has earned a position of pre-eminence only comparable

with that of Newton in modern times? Is not the answer that Darwin is

the only great natural philosopher who has emerged, since the time of

Aristotle, from the ranks of the biologists? When the fullest allowance

is made for the inadequacy of contemporary knowledge to meet all the

demands of the evolutionary problem, what still distinguishes Darwin’s

contribution from that of his numerous predecessors in the same field

is the consistency and thoroughness with which he set out to explore

the implications of evolution in every department of biological

information available at that time. By so doing he laid the foundations

of a new humanism akin to science, and created a philosophical issue

whose magnitude has only become apparent since the rise of the

behaviourist school in psychology. Evolution took the discussion of

human affairs out of the hands of the humanistic philosophers, and

brought it within the legitimate domain of scientific method.

From the dawn of philosophical controversy two opposing tendencies

have competed for mastery. One is based upon confidence in the

testimony of our receptor organs. The other mistrusts the evidence of

the senses. One relies on patient observation. The other appeals to

axioms which require no proof. One has its impulse in curiosity about

Nature. The other is preoccupied with human obligations. Between the

two extremes there have been many makeshifts. As one has fallen into

discredit, another has taken its place. The only permanent feature

of philosophical discussion is the impossibility of effecting a

permanent reconciliation between those who have called themselves, at

different periods of history, materialists and idealists, nominalists

and realists, empiricists and transcendentalists, mechanists

and vitalists, to emphasize some new aspect of a fundamental

incompatibility. In the distinction between publicity and privacy it

has been suggested that this antinomy does not necessarily reside

in the system of nature. It arises because our curiosity exceeds

our information. Up to a certain point we succeed in pooling our

experiences by the method of science. In so doing we construct the

public world. The method of science has achieved its most conspicuous

success in dealing with inanimate objects and with the brute creation.

To the few who are genuinely interested in these things the extent of

our knowledge has always seemed of more importance than the magnitude

of our ignorance. Hence there have always been philosophers of a type

which, for want of a better term, may be called _materialistic_. The

majority of people are not interested in natural objects except in

so far as the knowledge which science confers contributes to their

personal comfort. Man is pre-eminently interested in himself. So long

as science cannot satisfy that curiosity his private and personal

values assume a greater importance than the academic hypotheses of

science. Philosophers who teach us to distrust the guidance of our

sense data flatter our egotism, and soothe our vanity. Science cannot.

On the other hand science can supply us with aviation, broadcasting

and twilight sleep. Transcendental philosophy can only offer us the

good life. The politician distrusts the mechanist, because Science

provides no concept of divine right to fortify social privilege. He

cannot go all the way with Parmenides and identify the way of the

senses with the way of error, because scientists are too useful.

The only philosophy for the plain man who wants a plain answer to

a plain question is some sort of compromise between the standpoint

of transcendental metaphysics and mechanistic science. Since the

sixteenth century humanistic philosophy has been dogged by the problem

of accommodating man’s interest in the world around him with his

interest in his own person. Worldly interests compel civilized man to

recognize the claims of science up to a certain point. Egotism prompts

him to demand some supernatural sanction for the vagaries of his own

social conduct. For three centuries traditional philosophy has been

haunted by the possibility that science might in the end succeed in

satisfying man’s curiosity about his own nature. Darwin made that

possibility the explicit concern of scientific enquiry. From mediæval

times all attempts to effect a reconciliation between the empirical

standpoint and transcendental values have been concerned with defining

separate spheres of influence in which science and metaphysics can

operate without mutual interference. On that basis philosophy is still

taught in our universities to-day. Darwin’s _Descent of Man_ challenged

the complacent dualism which had permitted humanistic philosophy

and utilitarian science to pursue an independent course from the

Renaissance to the middle of the nineteenth century.

At every stage in the advance of scientific knowledge a new

system has arisen to conserve some fragments from the wreckage of

supernatural beliefs. There have been three outstanding attempts

to effect a compromise between observation and inspiration. The

systems of Aristotle, of Descartes and of Kant each exhibit features

characteristic of the state of contemporary scientific knowledge. Each

has a peculiarly interesting significance in the history of biological

science. The system of Aristotle was the last will and testament

of Greek biology. The system of Descartes was finally overthrown

by the evolutionary theory. The system of Kant is predestined to a

similar doom, when professional philosophers are prepared to face the

disquieting consequences of modern research on the “labyrinthine organ”

and Sherrington’s work on the “muscular sense.” If it is too early to

predict the fate of holism, it is instructive to reflect on that of its

predecessors.

§2

Aristotle undertook the task of finding a place for science in a

civilization in which scientific enquiry was approaching its decline.

His problem was simplified by the circumstance that the conflict

between teleology and mechanism had arisen as a conflict of interest

rather than interpretation. Burnet insists that the idea of purpose

only emerged at a comparatively late date in the history of Hellenic

science, and the more recent researches of Cyril Bailey emphasize the

same aspect of the incompatibility of natural and moral philosophy

in ancient Greece. Greek philosophy had inherited from the Hesiodic

cosmogony the belief that Chaos was the beginning of all things, gods

and men alike. It was unfettered by the Chaldean Fall and the doctrine

of creative providence. Aristotle’s system was therefore an attempt to

harmonize two tendencies which had come into being independently of

one another. One begins with Thales. It bore fruit in the brilliant

speculations of Leucippus and Democritus. It survived after Aristotle’s

death in the mechanical discoveries of the Alexandrian school. In

the poem of Lucretius it made a final gesture of august rhetoric. To

modern civilization it bequeathed the indestructibility of matter, and

the atomic concept which was revived by Gassendi in the seventeenth

century. Its rival was anti-scientific and mystical. It diverted

enquiry from the observation of nature to the duty of man. It was

preoccupied with the good life, with the soul and with the hereafter.

It began with the Eleatics and the Pythagoreans. It gave birth to the

school of Plato; and its influence survived long after the extinction

of Hellenic civilization. Through Philo Platonism transmitted the Logos

to the Nazarenes, and at a later date the neoplatonists equipped the

Church with the apparatus of the Trinitarian controversy. It completed

its contribution to Western culture in the Council of Trent, when the

mystery of human life, death and duty were placed for all time on a

firm foundation of deductive reasoning.

The success of Platonism was assured by the powerlessness of Greek

materialism to satisfy the requirements of Greek politics. The plain

man wanted to know whether the wise man will obey the laws, if he

knows that he will not be found out? With transparent honesty Epicurus

could only reply that a simple answer is difficult to find. The benign

and tolerant humanism which Epicurus grafted on the soil prepared by

the atomists was ill suited to flourish in the stern climate of the

military state. Like holism, Aristotle’s system was a shrewd blending

of science and statesmanship. It enabled its author to combine a

personal predilection for natural history with a political partiality

for slavery.

Aristotle borrowed from Plato the doctrine which identifies the φυσις,

or real nature with the best or most normal condition of a thing. He

rejected the respect for mathematics which Plato borrowed from the

Pythagoreans, and incorporated Plato’s teleology in his theory of the

physical world. One disastrous effect of this may perhaps be seen

in the neglect and preservation of more ancient work. Empedocles is

known to have made observations on respiration and the movement of the

blood. It would seem that he had recourse to experiment of a crude

kind. One fragment of his writings contains a hint that he came very

near to anticipating Torricelli and Harvey. The details have been lost.

Empedocles also put forward a theory of vision. He held that the eye

contains fire. Sight is produced when the fire within the eye goes

forth to meet the object. A hypothesis so well adapted to the view

which interprets life by “correlating the initiation of the activity

with its end” was, as might be expected, immortalized by Plato to the

calamity of physical and physiological enquiry. Science had a long road

to traverse before men learned the truth of Nietzsche’s statement that

“the most valuable knowledge is always discovered last, but the most

valuable knowledge consists of methods.”

The fundamental incompatibility of the naturalistic and Platonic

attitude to the Nature of Life is illustrated by the following passage

from the writings of a contemporary philosopher, Professor Wildon Carr:

“It is wholly inadequate to classify natural objects into the inert

and the living, into objects which are not responsive and objects

which are responsive to external impressions, and then to seek to

specify the property or character which differentiates the one

class from the other. Life is a perfectly definite and distinctive

phenomenon. It is not a thing, neither is it the character of

a thing. It is a purposive activity exercised within clearly

ascertainable limits and having a definite range. I use the term

purposive without any implication of awareness. Living activity

is purposive in the meaning that it can only be understood by

correlating the initiation of the activity with the end. The nature

of the activity is plainly recognizable, however difficult it may

be to conceive the agent, agents or agency which the activity

implies.... Life is individual: it exists only in living beings,

and _each living being is indivisible, a whole not constituted of

parts_.”

The concluding remarks of this passage are somewhat reminiscent of the

Athanasian creed, the germs of which were actually derived from the

neoplatonists. It displays the sterilizing influence of the Platonic

teaching in a peculiarly explicit form. If the words quoted in italics

were actually true, experiments carried out daily by medical students

in physiological and pharmacological laboratories would be impossible.

The physiologist takes the living machine to pieces and studies the

properties of its several parts. The experimental embryologist can

put it together again. Ross Harrison grafts the head end of a tadpole

of one species on to the tail end of a tadpole of another species.

The progress of modern biology has been made possible by the implicit

rejection of the attitude which Professor Wildon Carr advocates; and

this is not merely true of the growth of experimental physiology as

a quantitative science. In our generation Bergson has rehabilitated

the evolutionary doctrine in teleological language. Its history very

clearly shows that the rise of the evolutionary hypothesis in its

modern form is traceable to the liberation of biological enquiry from

Aristotelean teleology. Two centuries of research, fertilized by

the experimental temper which Vesalius reintroduced into the study

of medicine, paved the way for a new school of naturalists in the

eighteenth century. Ray and Linnæus took up the comparative study of

animal life where Aristotle had left it. At a later date Cuvier, Milne

Edwardes and Owen founded a school of comparative anatomy which--unlike

post-Darwinian morphology--made the issue of experiment the final

court of appeal. It was thus that Darwin and Wallace brought to the

discussion of Man’s place in Nature a mass of new data, accumulated in

the process of displacing the teleological bias under whose influence

Greek biology steadily declined. It is futile to blame Aristotle for

the influence which his particular form of compromise exerted on the

history of biology. In Aristotle’s time it was impossible to say: “Here

is a property of living matter, the teleological attitude leads us

to make such and such predictions; quantitative analysis leads us to

contrary conclusions: let us submit the merits of the two methods to

the issue of experiment.” Aristotelian biology was not an experimental

science.

When Aristotle infused into Greek biology the teleology of Platonism,

natural science had already progressed as far as it was destined to

advance without coming into conflict with teleological presumptions;

but the inevitability of the conflict was not yet apparent, and

does not emerge as a clearly defined issue in Greek philosophy.

Greek materialism, like modern science, was the offspring of secular

curiosity. For this reason it is easy to trace the germs of modern

hypotheses in the speculations of the ancients. It is more difficult

to determine how far such analogies are merely verbal. The extent to

which the Greeks had recourse to experiment has given rise to lively

controversy. We are more familiar with their beliefs about nature than

with the evidence on which they relied. To reconstruct the scientific

knowledge of Anaximander and Empedocles from the fragments of their

writings which remain is a task no less formidable than that of a

future historian who has nothing but the torn pages of a Harmsworth

encyclopædia to provide evidence of contemporary science. The fact

remain that the scientific knowledge of the ancients lacks two

features which are highly characteristic of modern enquiry. Greek

science was static. Having no means of measuring short intervals

of time, the Greek could make little use of dynamical notions. The

mathematical technique for dealing conveniently with dynamical

calculations was not evolved until Greek geometry was supplemented

by the universal arithmetic of the Arabs. Galileo’s dynamics was the

death-blow to Aristotelian teleology. To the Greeks time relations were

philosophical enigmas. They had not as yet become objects of scientific

enquiry. Modern mechanistic biology lays emphasis on _process_. Greek

biology was still dominated by _structure_. This preoccupation gave

rise to the distinction between form and substance which assumes a

prominent place in the Aristotle of the schoolmen, and persisted

in modern science, until the dynamical concept of electromagnetic

mass was put forward. A second characteristic which distinguishes

contemporary science from the natural philosophy of the Greeks has

been emphasized less by historians of science. This may be because

astronomy and mechanics were developed by the school of Alexandria in

close association with mathematics. That brilliant but short-lived

phase in the science of antiquity was post-Aristotelian. Astronomy was

the only branch of natural science which had attained the precision of

measurement in Aristotle’s time.

The distinction between Aristotelian vitalism and the modern biological

standpoint is most apparent in the attitude which Aristotle adopted to

quantitative investigation. “Mathematical accuracy of language,” he

declares, “is not to be required in all things, but in those things

that do not involve any connexion with matter. Wherefore such is not

the natural (alternatively _physical_) mode of discovering truth, for

perhaps the whole of Nature involves matter. Therefore first must we

investigate what Nature is. For in this way also will it be evident

about what only natural science is conversant, and whether it is the

province of one science or many to speculate into causes and first

principles.” This passage occurs in the first book of the Metaphysics.

There are other passages in which the same point of view is expressed.

They show conclusively that Aristotle was not content with ignoring the

connexion between mathematics and science. He definitely asserted that

the quantitative study of natural phenomena is not the correct one.

In this he went further than Plato. While Plato despised the study of

physics and biology, he recognized the vital dependence of astronomy

on mathematics and valued its pursuit. The standpoint which Aristotle

adopted is comprehensible. His interest in nature was mainly that of

the naturalist. He did not study living creatures in the belief that by

so doing he would be able to predict their behaviour. That possibility

only emerged into prominence when Lavoisier and Laplace brought the

thermometer and the balance to the study of respiration. By then the

spectacular progress of physics had necessitated a new adjustment of

the claims of moral and natural philosophy. The philosophy of Descartes

liberated biology from developing within the limitations prescribed by

the Aristotelian system.

Two events contributed significantly to the situation which Descartes

faced at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The period which

intervened between Aristotle and Descartes witnessed the rise of

Christianity and the origin of a new cultural synthesis within the

world of Islam. At Alexandria natural science and mathematics still

flourished, when Christianity became the official faith of the

Roman Empire. Five centuries after the death of Aristotle Diophantus

made what seems to have been the first definite contribution to the

development of algebraical analysis. Alexandrian science came to an end

when “on a fatal day in the holy season of Lent,” Hypatia the expositor

of Diophantus “was torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged to

the church, and inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter the reader

and a troop of savage and merciless fanatics.” Two centuries later what

was spared by the religion of Cyril was consigned to the flames by the

victorious armies of Islam.

While Christianity and Mohammedanism were competing to appease the

deeper needs of mankind, the genius of a dark-skinned people was

preparing the stage for a rebirth of European culture. Before the

destruction of a second library of Alexandria the Greek learning had

filtered into the middle East through the hospitality which the Persian

court extended in turn to the banished Platonists, the Jews and the

heretic Nestorians. In India Brahmagupta and his successors had applied

themselves to the same problems which Diophantus had assailed. Half

a century before the foundation of the University of Baghdad Hindu

astronomical tables and the rhetorical algebra of the far East had been

introduced into Persia. By the beginning of the ninth century the works

of Ptolemy, Euclid, Hippocrates and Aristotle had been translated into

Arabic. At the end of the tenth century the Moorish culture was firmly

established in Europe. In the universities of Cordova, Seville and

Toledo, the study of medicine and mathematics flourished side by side.

The medical schools of Italy and France were outposts of the Moorish

culture in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Moors extended

the Alexandrian pharmacopeias; and advanced the study of anatomy.

Jewish missionaries of the Moorish culture brought the tradition of

dissection into Italy. From Arabic manuscripts Italy first made contact

with the resources of Greek science. Arabic learning transmitted the

texts from which ecclesiasticism imbibed its taste for metaphysics,

and at the same time contributed two influences subversive to the

Aristotelian system. It gave birth to chemistry as an experimental

science, and it developed the beginnings of syncopated algebra. The

invention of algebra made possible the efflorescence of physics when

Greek geometry had long since completed its task as the midwife of

mathematical astronomy.

From the fact-loving temper of Aristotle the naturalist Arabic

curiosity had absorbed all that could be used as a basis for scientific

enquiry. In the Sorbonne the Platonic ingredients of his system brought

fresh grist to the mill of theological controversy. By seeking for

“causes and first principles,” Aristotle in his own words had made

philosophy the “divine science.” As the divine science it was pressed

into the service of orthodox theology and the Protestant revolt against

ecclesiastical authority. During the fourteenth and the fifteenth

centuries the resources of the Eastern Empire were ransacked for the

rhetoricians and sophists neglected by the empirical disposition of

Arabic scholarship. The political speculations of the ancients became

the rationale of Protestant democracy. As the influence of Platonism

on science succumbed to the success of the new experimental and

quantitative methods which were gaining ground in physics, classical

humanism completed the divorce of moral and natural philosophy by

elevating the authority of Plato in politics: but before classical

humanism had gained ascendancy in the mediæval universities, an

ascendancy which became a monopoly in the grammar schools, Arab science

had implanted in the oldest seats of European learning a seed destined

in the fullness of time to challenge not merely the authority of

church councils but the authority of print, to place the authority of

experience above the authority of the written word, as Protestantism

had placed the authority of the written word above the authority of

church councils.

Plato would have had little use for physicists in his Utopia. To outlaw

science was the last thing which Protestant rulers were prepared to do.

The great navigations had made science a necessity to the mercantile

interests. So long as they refrained from making themselves a nuisance,

like Servetus whose inability to envisage the Trinity in its correct

numerical proportions earned for him a harsher fate than that of

Galileo, scientists must be left alone. The world had outgrown the

Aristotelian compromise. The time had come to replace it by some new

device.

The Cartesian philosophy met the new situation by defining separate

spheres of autonomy for the scientist and the metaphysician. It did

not attempt to mix metaphysics and science in a uniform system of

nature. With his propositions and demonstrations “which establish the

existence of God and the distinction between the mind and body of man

disposed in geometrical order” Descartes stumbled upon the felicitous

notion that God ordained the investigation of nature according to

strictly mechanistic principles. “Now that I know him,” he discloses

in Meditation V, “I possess the means of acquiring a perfect knowledge

respecting innumerable matters, as well relative to God Himself and

other intellectual objects as to corporeal nature, in so far as it is

the object of pure mathematics.”

So piety prescribes that the scientist, contrary to the admonition

of Aristotle, must apply mathematics to the investigation of nature.

By the same process of reasoning or inspiration Descartes arrives at

the conclusion that teleological hypotheses in natural science are an

impious abrogation of the prerogatives of Deity. “Likewise finally,” he

asserts in the _Principles of Philosophy_, “we will not seek reasons

of natural things from the end which God or nature proposed to himself

in their creation (i.e. final causes), for we ought not to presume so

far as to think that we are sharers in the counsels of Deity, but,

considering him as the efficient cause of all things, let us endeavour

to discover by the natural light which he has planted in us, applied

to those of his attributes of which he has been willing we should have

some knowledge, what must be concluded regarding those effects we

perceive by our senses; bearing in mind however what has been already

said, that we must only confide in this natural light so long as

nothing contrary to its dictates is revealed by God himself.”

As Descartes was prepared to concede to mechanistic science the entire

brute creation, the Cartesian framework provided plenty of latitude

for biological investigation. Descartes stimulated experimental

physiology by his own ingenious speculations; and his influence on

physiology survived after it had been superseded by later philosophical

systems. In biology the Cartesian tradition has fallen into discredit

through the rise of evolutionary ideas. The evolutionists persisted in

following “the natural light;” and their theological contemporaries

maintained that it led them to conclusions contrary to what had been

“revealed by God Himself.” Since then biologists have been faced with

the alternative of pressing forward to a more radically mechanistic

conception of life, or abandoning it altogether. I have called the

extension of the mechanistic conception the _publicist standpoint_ in

contradistinction to _holism_, the most recent compromise.

In _Science and the Modern World_ Dr. Whitehead calls the period

immediately before the Renaissance the Age of Reason. That which

followed is the Age of Faith. The Age of Argument and the Age of

Confidence might perhaps describe the difference in more significant

terms. Confidence in the method of science has grown gradually with

the expansion of civilization. What is called modern science has

arisen, because innumerable, at first independent, lines of enquiry

have coalesced. It has not come into being because the men who have

pursued these separate but converging paths have had any general

theory about nature as a whole, purposeful or otherwise. Curiosity has

always induced some men to speculate without investigating, others to

investigate without speculating beyond their terms of reference, and

a good many to do both. Aristotle was neither the first nor the last

scientist to write a natural history and a volume of Gifford lectures.

Newton divided his time between gravitation and the prophecies of

Daniel. Faraday elaborated a theory of the ether and advocated

the tenets of Sandemanism. Aristotle’s natural history, Newton’s

gravitation and Faraday’s ether were not the philosophical complements

of their respective ethical, political or devotional beliefs. Aristotle

dissected animals, Newton gazed at the stars, Faraday experimented

with his electrical machine, because they were interested in living

creatures and the heavenly bodies and electrical phenomena.

The pursuit of science has its personal impulse in curiosity and its

social impulse in the power which science confers. The Greeks accepted

or rejected as illusory the evidence of their senses. In Aristotle’s

system science does not beg for a philosophical sanction. It was

reserved for the piety of Descartes to introduce the singular idea

that the scientist requires a licence to practice signed and stamped

by the metaphysician. The idea that science requires a metaphysical

justification has been revived by Dr. Whitehead who adopts a novel, and

I think incorrect, view of Hume’s contribution to philosophy. When the

scientist enters the field of contemporary philosophical controversy,

he is confronted with a jargon whose existence has very little

historical or logical connexion with the assumptions on which he works.

It is not surprising that he remains, in the words of Dr. Whitehead,

“blandly indifferent” to the arguments with which Hume refuted those

notions of causality and inference which traditional philosophers have

chosen to regard as the justification of science. The important fact

about Hume’s argument is that he refuted the pretensions of moral

philosophy by the same arguments which demolished the irrelevant dogmas

which natural philosophy inherited from the age of scholasticism.

Starting from a purely introspective basis Descartes attempts to find a

justification for the growing confidence of mankind in the testimony of

the senses. The subjective empiricism of Locke is still groping after

the same solution. Hume pursues this method to its bitter conclusion;

and shows that it led to complete scepticism. He proves to his own

satisfaction that the method of introspection cannot be made the basis

of socially communicable knowledge. The theory of a public world builds

upon that foundation, by examining the characteristics of questions

to which a socially communicable answer is possible. The strength of

Hume’s position is more apparent in our own generation than it was at

the time, when he wrote. Our expectation of living has increased as

we have learned to worry less about the good life and more about the

good drain. That the questions with which science deals are legitimate

objects of enquiry and that the method which science adopts is the most

satisfactory way of answering them is tacitly accepted by everybody who

avails himself of the amenities of a railway time table, the bioscope,

the telegraph office, the diphtheria vaccine, the ocean liner and the

air mail. If we do not attempt to answer the questions which perplexed

Socrates, it is because we have at our disposal a vastly greater body

of material to guide us in determining what characteristics of a

question make it suitable for being asked. We cannot say whether the

wise man will obey the laws, if he thinks that he will not be found

out; but we are less interested in knowing the answer, because we know

that it is highly probable that his finger prints will be traced.

Detective fiction has familiarized us with other devices which have

replaced the deathbed confession of the repentant atheist.

Hume applies the Cartesian method, demonstrates its sterility, and

arrives at this attitude which he states with no uncertain sound in a

passage which occurs at the conclusion of the essay on “The Sceptical

or Academical Philosophy.” “When we run over libraries persuaded of

their principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any

volume of divinity or school metaphysics for instance, let us ask, Does

it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No.

Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact

and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames. For it can contain

nothing but sophistry and illusion.”

In Hume’s scepticism natural science is no longer the man with the

muck rake, and metaphysics is no longer the divine science. Kant’s

critique now appears to salvage supernaturalism by a compromise in

which the Cartesian method is reversed, and a greater confidence in

scientific method is evident. He invokes science to save the soul

of man. Newton’s system had made space and time the basic concepts

of science. The physiology of Kant’s generation had not extended

its enquiries beyond the range of the five senses with which the

Greek empiricists were familiar. Kant seized upon this limitation of

eighteenth-century biology to substantiate the contention that science

draws upon information which is independent of sensual experience. In

Kant’s idealism space and time, the basic concepts of science, appear

as purely mental constructions. This was not a new point of view; but

the prominence it assumed was new, and resulted from the character of

contemporary science and the conclusions which Hume had advanced.

Volumes of speculation on the relation of time and space to sensual

experience have been written both by physicists and metaphysicians on

the assumption that the human frame possesses no means of recording

its own rhythms and its orientation to the earth’s gravitational

field. Mach is the only natural philosopher who has hinted at the

possibility that the Kantian argument might be re-examined from the

modern biological standpoint. Modern physiology is not circumscribed

like the physiology of Kant by the five senses. It recognizes ten or

eleven distinct types of receptor elements in the human body. Two

of these are immensely significant to the attitude which we adopt

to Kant’s criticism of Hume’s position. In 1828 the experiments of

Flourens first demonstrated that animals are receptive to the influence

of gravity. The receptive area in our own bodies is located in that

part of the internal ear, sometimes called the labyrinthine organ. Just

as removal of the eye prevents a fish from responding to its background

by colour change, destruction of the labyrinthine organs abolishes its

characteristic orientation in space, when swimming. We do not say that

a cat falls on all fours, because it has a priori knowledge of space

relations. It falls on all fours, because the orientation of its body

as a whole is recorded by its labyrinthine organ, and the appropriate

muscles are brought into play by reflex action. The possibility that

orientation of individual members with reference to one another might

be regulated by a self-recording arrangement is a comparatively recent

discovery. Sherrington has shown that the tendons and muscles possess

special structures which he calls proprioceptors. They respond to the

stretching of the muscles. By virtue of those muscular rhythms which

Galileo employed as his standard of reference in devising the first

clock, the human body is itself a self-recording timepiece. Pavlov does

not appeal to a priori knowledge of time to interpret the interval

which elapses between the ringing of a bell and the secretion of saliva

in a dog.

The belated discovery of the labyrinthine organ and the proprioceptors

is easy to understand. We live in a world in which day and night follow

one another. We can close our eyes and darken our vision. The eyes are

exposed to view. Their connexion with light calls for no elaborate

demonstration. The labyrinthine organ and the proprioceptors are only

accessible to dissection or to the microscope. We can never get away

from the influence of gravity or the rhythms of our own bodies. What we

never miss, we fail to notice. This peculiarity of our corporeal nature

gives a peculiar and fallacious plausibility to Kant’s contention

that we can take away from a body its colour, weight or smell, all of

which can be “referred to mere sensuous experience,” while “the space

which it occupied still remains and this is utterly impossible to

annihilate in thought.” To annihilate space is not an impossible feat

of imagination for the modern biologist. In Rupert Brooke’s poem the

heaven of fishes harbours the worm that never dies. If the metaphor

had been pushed a little further, it would have transpired that the

philosophy of fishes might well contain many axioms that are omitted

in the Kantian critique. Fishes in general have no eyelids. They can

be kept in a uniformly illuminated aquarium without the experience of

darkness. The sharks and their allies possess a small duct by which

the internal ear communicates with the exterior. It would not be an

impossible operation to remove and replace the contents of their

labyrinthine organs, and render them temporarily indifferent to the

earth’s gravitational field. A philosophical fish confined from birth

to a uniformly illuminated aquarium and subjected from time to time to

this simple operation, might conceivably invert the Kantian argument.

He would be shocked by the gross materialism of an undulatory theory of

light; but he would be willing to be convinced about any quaint views

upon space which the piscine physicists propounded.

§3

Kant’s doctrine that space and time are concepts necessarily

independent of one another and of sensory experience has only come into

conflict with the fruits of scientific enquiry in our own generation.

In spite of this the influence of Hume has steadily increased and

the influence of Kant has declined during the intervening period.

Psychology, brought into existence by Kant’s appeal for a science which

would define the characteristics of a priori knowledge, has betrayed

its parent. In every department of human enquiry investigators are

asking, does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or

number, does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter

of fact or experience? Mr. Bertrand Russell, an impenitent advocate

of a priori knowledge in his capacity as a mathematician and an

uncompromising empiricist in his capacity as an educationist, tells

us that “logic must no more admit a unicorn than can zoology, for

logic is concerned with the real world just as truly as zoology.” Dr.

MacDougall, the most vigorous contemporary critic of the behaviourist

standpoint, is devoting his energies to the breeding of genetically

pure stocks of Wistar Institute white rats. A professor of political

science in London University so far departs from the traditions of

his discipline as to collect statistics on the number of hours which

members of Parliament actually devote to their democratic activities.

It was said by an old Scots balladmonger, “I care not who makes the

nation’s laws, while I sing her songs.” When the modern descendant of

Democritus is assured that materialism is on the decline, he may well

reply in a similar vein. We all behave as if we were behaviourists

nowadays.

Between Hume and Darwin, Adam Smith, Malthus, Quételet and Marx sowed

the seeds of the behaviourist standpoint in the soil of the humanities.

Darwin’s _Descent of Man_ precipitated a new phase in the revolution

which was replacing classical humanism by a humanism which draws its

inspiration from the success of natural science and looks to the

scientist to supply it with the first principles of method. It was no

longer possible to challenge the claim of science to the study of the

brute creation. The recognition of man as a by-product of the same

secular agencies undermined the last defence of the metaphysician.

Hegelian philosophy was a forlorn and belated attempt to lock the

stable doors after the horses had long since escaped. The piety of

Descartes had conceded that animals are automata. The brutal candour

of Darwin emphasized in a new light the fact that man is an animal. It

was fitting that William James should arise in the fullness of time to

proclaim the new gospel that philosophers are also men. If the full

force of this devastating sequence was not apparent to the pragmatic

apologists of the Pelagian heresy, it has acquired a new, and, I

believe, epochal significance through the breakdown of the Cartesian

distinction between reflex and voluntary activity in modern physiology.

To-day the influence of Hume’s empiricism and Darwin’s doctrine of

descent can be seen in every branch of social enquiry. In history

the materialistic bias is evident in the writings of those who would

be least willing to commit themselves to economic determinism as a

general hypothesis of social development. Economics has completely

severed its moorings to moral philosophy, and proudly boasts that

it is an ethically neutral science. The genetic aspect of human

behaviour is recognized in new endowments to encourage the pursuit of

social biology. If social psychology has hitherto remained immune

to the influence of modern research on animal behaviour, it borrowed

its equipment of instincts from the discredited speculations of the

selectionists. The humanities have passed out of the hands of the

grammarians in the higher seats of learning. Before another generation

has passed the accomplished fact will be officially sanctioned in the

earlier stages of education.

In its long apprenticeship to theological dogma classical humanism

has created a type of philosophy which is inimical to the temper

of scientific enquiry. This tradition has been perpetuated in our

educational system by associating the study of history and human

affairs in general with an exclusively linguistic rather than with a

scientific training in early life. The belief that philosophy lies

outside the province of science and that logic is more fundamental than

science has been so thoroughly inculcated by the classical tradition

that most men of science accept it with servile complacency. It is not

surprising that many of them view with alarm the magnitude of the new

territories which scientific method has incorporated within its domain.

In every period the birth of a new tradition has made the forces of

reaction more stubborn. This fact must be accepted. It is unwise to

expect results of far-reaching importance in social science in the

immediate future. If astronomy is the most exact of the observational

sciences, it is also the oldest. It began in Babylon and Egypt about

six thousand years ago. Economists and eugenists who hope to outgrow

their phlogiston theories in one generation take an unduly hopeful view

of the rapidity of scientific progress. New forms of compromise will

come to the rescue of custom thought and power thought, before social

science is able to replace the wrong way of asking a question by the

right way.

It is highly probable that the next century will witness a

consolidation of supernaturalistic tendencies in western Europe. It

is legitimate to entertain the possibility that the rival attitude,

reinvigorated by fresh triumphs of scientific method in the treatment

of human affairs, will revive with greater vitality, if not in our

own civilization, in that which takes its place. I am in complete

agreement with Dr. Haldane, General Smuts, Professor Eddington and

Dr. Whitehead, when they assure us that the materialistic tendency

in philosophy, which was gaining ground under Darwin’s influence, is

less popular to-day. I venture to interpret the reaction in a way

with which they would not agree, and to believe that it has retreated

_pour mieux sauter_. The mid-nineteenth century in Great Britain was

a period of prosperity and expansion. In Huxley’s generation unbelief

was the luxury of a privileged class which was not afraid of the man

in the street. The period in which we live is one of ferment and

disintegration. In its impetuosity to settle the problems of human

conduct, it will not be content to await the slow advance of science.

Mechanistic philosophy cannot offer to the privileged a supernatural

sanction for the things they value most. It cannot proffer to the

unprivileged the shadowy compensation of a world into which the

thought of science is unable to penetrate. A mechanistic philosophy

might conceivably be popular in a society in which gross inequalities

of possession did not exist. To-day it can only flourish among those

who have leisure to study, when their privileges are not compromised

by social unrest. He who has the temerity to defend the mechanistic

position need not expect any laurels from his own generation. He

cannot seek sanctuary in the fearless candour of a contemporary Huxley

or a contemporary Tyndall. He must extract what comfort he can glean

by reflecting that the system of Aristotle triumphed over that of

Epicurus, and the thought of the nineteenth century was nearer to

Epicurus than to Aristotle. Scanning the new blossoms which have lately

been added to the nosegay of philosophic compromise, he will say with

Swinburne,

“But for me their new device is barren, the times are bare,

Things long past over suffice, and men forgotten that were.”

X. PUBLICITY, REALITY, AND RELIGION

“Conscientiousness in small things, the self-control of the

religious man, was a preparatory school for the scientific

character, as was also, in a very pre-eminent sense, the attitude

of mind which makes a man take problems seriously, irrespective of

what personal advantage he may derive from them.”--Nietzsche, _The

Will to Power_.

§1

Whatever may be said against pragmatism, it served a useful purpose

in calling attention to the connexion between people’s temperaments

and their philosophies. William James classified philosophers in

two genera, the tender-minded and the tough-minded. I believe that

there exists a more fundamental distinction between two types which

correspond to the introvert and the extrovert of the psychiatrist.

Our attitude to the scope of philosophy is determined by whether

we take an individualistic or a social view of what constitutes

truth. In the one case our canons of logic will be inferred from an

examination of the properties of propositions which carry conviction

to ourselves individually, in the other by an examination of the

properties of propositions which are best equipped to obtain general

assent. For this reason I am not convinced that Bertrand Russell

is right in thinking that modern logic brings the most devastating

criticism to bear on traditional philosophy. Modern logic has not

been devised with the aim of achieving the same results as those

which constitute the goal of traditional philosophers. It is not

surprising that traditional philosophers, finding its conclusions

unpalatable, remain unconverted. Modern logic is the offspring of

mathematics, and mathematics has developed in intimate association

with science. For the last seven hundred years traditional logic and

introspective philosophy have been no less intimately associated with

theology. Hence has arisen the arrogant assumption that on account of

its subject matter introspective philosophy is more fundamental than

science. There is no reason why we should regard it in this light.

If philosophy is knowledge, it is presumably something transmissible

by discourse. Otherwise it is difficult to formulate any distinction

between knowledge and mere opinion or superstition. We cannot therefore

discuss knowledge without taking into account the people who share

it. The most important characteristic of scientific beliefs is

their communicability. Those who take the social as opposed to the

individualistic attitude to truth will embark on their adventures by

examining the characteristics of scientific judgment. To any one who

is not an incorrigible individualist the results of scientific enquiry

must establish the anatomy of philosophy. Whether I am by temperament

an individualist or otherwise I am forced to submit to the discipline

of discourse in practice. Let us suppose that two individuals N and

M are engaged in public discourse concerning the Nature of Life. N

states the proposition “I (N) am a conscious being.” M states “I (M)

am a conscious being.” The only neutral ground for the discussion of

the two statements is the more general statement “N and M are conscious

beings.” In the nomenclature suggested elsewhere in these essays this

neutral ground is the resultant of the public components of the two

original statements which N and M make. Personal statements may be

looked upon as complex variables. Philosophy is the technique of

operating with the real (public) part of such statements and separating

them from the imaginary (i.e. private) part. This distinction is not

abolished by the fact that the temperaments of some philosophers lead

them to apply the term _real_ to the private and _imaginary_ to the

public component. The fact remains that in public discourse we have

to operate with the public component. The public statement “N and M

are conscious beings” implies our ability to define characteristics of

behaviour which are denoted by the adjective _conscious_. This task

which now lies within the scope of biological investigation refines

the publicity in the concept of consciousness. For the performance of

public discussion the term “_I_” is a member of the class denoted by

“_Man_.” Anything implied in public discussion by the statement “I am

conscious, etc.,” is included in the statement “Man is a conscious

animal.” The significance of anything which cannot be subjected to this

limitation is a purely _private_ matter. From this it follows that a

discussion of the Nature of Life is complete, when we have taken into

account the characteristics of conscious behaviour. On the contrary

view the propositions of philosophy are not necessarily communicable.

The theory of a _public world_ suggested in a previous essay on the

Nature of Life corresponds very closely with the attitude adopted by

Poincaré in the following passage which occurs in his _Foundations of

Science_:

“Sensations are therefore intransmissible or rather all that is

pure quality in them is intransmissible and forever impenetrable.

But it is not the same with relations between these sensations.

From this point of view all that is objective is devoid of all

quality and is pure relation.... Nothing therefore will have

objective value except what is transmissible by discourse...”

So far as it goes there is nothing essentially new in this statement.

It represents an attitude common among thoughtful people with a

scientific training. Professor Eddington is in agreement with it when

he writes:

“For reasons which are generally admitted, though I should not

like to have to prove that they are conclusive, I grant your

consciousness equal status with my own; and I use this second-hand

part of my consciousness to ‘put myself in your place.’ Accordingly

my subject of study becomes differentiated into the contents of

many consciousnesses, each constituting a _view-point_. There then

arises the problem of combining the view-points, and it is through

this that the external world of physics arises. Much that is in any

one consciousness is individual, much is apparently alterable by

volition; but there is a stable element which is common to other

consciousness. That common element we desire to study to describe

as fully and accurately as possible, and to discover the laws by

which it combines now with one view point, now with another. This

common element cannot be placed in one man’s consciousness rather

than in another’s; it must be in neutral ground--an external

world... The external world of physics is thus a symposium of the

worlds presented to different view-points...” (p. 283, _The Nature

of the Physical World_).

How then does it come about that “a universal Mind or Logos would

be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state

of scientific theory”? (p. 338). Or again, how are we to draw the

conclusion “from those arguments from modern science that religion

first became possible for a reasonable scientific man about the year

1927”? I think that we may possibly find an answer to these questions

by bearing in mind that Professor Eddington’s external world is the

external world of physics rather than the public world of physics plus

biology. Throughout his exposition he assumes that biologists are still

committed to the dualistic standpoint of the Cartesian tradition. Thus

he states: “a mental decision to turn right or turn left starts one

of two alternative sets of impulses along the nerves to the feet. At

some brain centre the cause of behaviour of certain atoms or elements

of the physical world is directly determined for them by the mental

decision...” (p. 312). It is not clear why there is in what Professor

Eddington calls the “mystical experiences” of different people

sufficient “neutral ground” to provide the basis of a symposium with

as universal a sanction as that of the external world of physics. That

after all is implicit in our notion of religion. It is not difficult

to see why he finds no objection to placing his external world under

the direction of a universal mind, since he assumes that the teleology,

which has been abandoned in dealing with non-living matter, is quite

indispensable in dealing with living matter.

It must be admitted that Professor Eddington could claim the support

of at least one eminent biologist who holds that the method of the

biologist is different from the method of the physicist, and the

method of the physicist can never be applied to the analysis of

“conscious behaviour.” However stoutly Dr. Haldane may advocate the

first proposition his many distinguished contributions to biological

science are little calculated to illustrate its truth. He has made

important additions to our knowledge of the physical chemistry of the

blood by adopting the method of the physicist. When, if ever, he has

departed from that method he has done so without the assent of his

fellow physiologists. The practice of even the most exemplary persons

not infrequently falls short of the loftiness of their professions,

and it is perhaps unfair to criticize Dr. Haldane on this account.

The weakness of Dr. Haldane’s philosophical position resides in the

fact that he gives no consideration to the new issues raised by the

physiology of the conditioned reflex. Pavlov’s work has shown us that

even when he is dealing with “conscious behaviour,” the biologist

can still approach the subject matter of his enquiries with the same

attitude which the physicist adopts.

On the whole people are more interested in conscious behaviour than in

anything else. Before science could attempt to tell us something about

conscious behaviour, Poincaré’s outlook could never have a far-reaching

appeal. The history of human thought again and again proves that people

will always fall back on the language of magic, when the language of

science provides them with no vocabulary in which to discuss the things

that interest them most. Magical views of the world have declined not

because science disproves them, but because science provides better

ways of discussing the same issues. If we can usefully treat the

characteristics of conscious behaviour without invoking a holistic

or animistic concept of consciousness, the scope of introspective

philosophy must in time dwindle to a vanishing point. Philosophy will

then confine itself to examining the logical structure of scientific

theories. It may seem more natural, more in keeping with common sense,

to think of a wholeness defined by the term consciousness than to face

the tremendous intellectual effort of envisaging the behaviour of an

organism from an atomistic standpoint. If the latter contains within

it the capacity of growth and of yielding verifiable conclusions which

cannot be derived from the traditional point of view, consciousness

must go as gravitation and action at a distance must go, however much

Kant and common sense may urge the _a priori_ necessity of a Euclidean

space and a measure of time that is independent of it. As scientific

investigation invades the domain of conscious behaviour the way will be

open for developing a new outlook in philosophy, one that is neither

intrinsically monistic nor intrinsically pluralistic, since it makes no

such claims to finality as the academic philosophies of the past have

usually done.

§2

Professor Eddington, like Professor Whitehead, entertains the hope

that science may eventually lead us to conclusions about the universe

involving something more than practical utility on the one hand and

mere intellectual satisfaction on the other. The reasons which they

give are not sufficiently definite to criticize, as they would perhaps

themselves admit. It is more easy to understand the point of view of

Mr. Sullivan, an impenitent individualist, who is frankly resentful

towards science, because science cannot serve the needs of theology or

provide sanctions for his æsthetic predilections.

“The greater importance that men attach to art and religion,” he

maintains, “is not due simply to their ignorance of science. Art

and Religion satisfy deeper needs; the problems they deal with

are intrinsically more important.... Our æsthetic and religious

experiences need not lose the significance they appear to have

merely because they are not taken into account in the scientific

scheme....”[8]

The real significance of these remarks would be much clearer, if Mr.

Sullivan had substituted the word _personally_ for _intrinsically_.

Mr. Sullivan is by temperament an individualist philosopher. For him

what is _true_ has a specially personal value. Scientific beliefs are

only _convenient_. Thus in discussing the system of Copernicus he

makes the comment, “it was convenient; the question of whether it was

true or untrue was not explicitly discussed.”[9] Consistently with the

individualistic standpoint in philosophy Mr. Sullivan does not divulge

the inward revelation which empowers him to distinguish with such

nicety between propositions that are “true” and propositions that are

merely “convenient.”

It sounds very impressive to state that science leaves out of account

man’s religious and artistic experiences, that religion and art satisfy

deeper cravings and so forth; but religion and art are two words which

are rarely used by any two people in the same sense or by any one

person in the same sense on two successive occasions. Which religion

does Mr. Sullivan mean? Is he a Buddhist, a Seventh Day Adventist,

a Shintoist, or a Bahai? Is his religion an ethic or a cosmogony,

or both? Until he has defined his position more explicitly, it is

difficult to be quite sure what he is talking about. The terms art and

religion are used in very different senses. That being so, to say that

everybody has religious or æsthetic experiences does not necessarily

imply the existence of any common plane of thoughtful intercourse

other than the conceptual world of science. An expert social hostess

recognizes this when she wisely refrains from asking Mr. A who is

interested in Art to meet Mr. B who is interested in Art.

In seeking to transcendentalize his private world, Mr. Sullivan

has not been altogether felicitous in coupling together Art and

Religion. Although many people become very irritable in the course of

a discussion on the merits of vorticism or free verse, most educated

persons admit on reflection that such discussions owe their interest to

the light they shed on differences of temperament in the disputants.

It is true that professors of literature in Universities and rather

youthful reviewers sometimes take a more pontifical view of their

own powers of divination, but even our schools have got beyond the

stage, when it was thought proper that children should be whipped into

believing that Wordsworth’s _Idiot Boy_ is a _great_ poem. Whether Mr.

Sullivan chooses to say that Van der Waal’s equation is true or merely

convenient, it may be suggested that he would embark on a discussion of

its truth or convenience with some hope of final agreement. I believe

that Mr. Sullivan would embark upon an argument about a question of

æsthetics with much less hope of changing his opponent’s attitude than

if he were discussing Van der Waal’s equation. Mr. Sullivan has no

need to appeal for a transcendental sanction for æsthetic experience.

Æsthetics are questions about which sophisticated people agree to

differ.

With religion it is different. Whereas a person can have very genuine

artistic interests without claiming a universal, transcendental or

_public_ sanction for his own preferences, religion ceases to be

religion and becomes æsthetics or ethics, when it does not put forward

such claims. A consideration of the following illustration will make

this clear. A derives satisfaction from reciting Mr. Yeats’ poem, “The

faeries dance in a place apart...” etc. B derives satisfaction from

singing the evangelical hymn that contains the lines “Bright crowns

there are, bright crowns laid up on high...” Inasmuch as the first form

of satisfaction involves neither belief nor unbelief, it is properly

described as artistic or _æsthetic_. Inasmuch as the second implies

in addition the conviction that a certain ponderable object exists at

a certain height from the earth’s surface, as in the cruder forms

of evangelism it does, the satisfaction derived from singing it is

_religious_.

The word religious is used in so many different senses that it is

dangerous to employ it at all without examining it more closely.

Cynical paradox-mongers not infrequently complain that materialists

are “religious.” When so used, the term merely implies a sense of the

importance of belief. In an unscientific age persons of this type

would probably gravitate towards some form of religious organization.

Looking at religious organizations as a whole one sees two sharply

contrasted components in the majority: views about human conduct or

the ethical aspect of religion and views about the nature of the

universe or cosmogony. To-day, most educated people regard the latter

as the proper sphere of science. We are told by modernists that the

earlier chapters of the Book of Genesis are to be cherished for the

sublime ethical teaching they impart. What sublime ethical teaching

is implied in the prohibition to eat of the fruit of the tree of

Knowledge or in the story that woman was manufactured from a man’s rib

as an afterthought of creation need not detain us. It is only partly

true to say that liberal theologians have surrendered the sphere of

cosmogony to science. They have surrendered the details, but they have

not surrendered the prerogative of imposing upon whatever cosmogony

the scientists supply a teleology of their own. This teleology is, it

is true, so attenuated as to embarrass the advance of science far less

than those more crude revivals of animism sometimes inappropriately

classified under the generic heading New Thought. Its justification

becomes less and less calculated to carry conviction, as the domain of

scientific method is officially sanctioned by the Churches. The advance

of scientific knowledge reinforces the suspicion that an attitude to

experience which leads to misleading or sterile conclusions about the

details of our cosmogony can hardly be expected to prove essential to

the finished picture.

Just as the cosmological aspect of religion has become resolved into a

_public_ component which has passed over into the province of science

and a personal component for which the mystic seeks to formulate

some ulterior transcendental sanction, the ethical side of religion

consists of values which must be taken or left and prohibitions or

admonitions which can be rationally discussed as instruments for

promoting the acceptance of these values, if the latter are taken for

granted. Here again the claims of liberal theologians become more

modest with the advance of more complex methods of social organization.

Sunday observance, fasting, prohibitions against dancing, smoking and

theatricals become less and less fashionable. Even in the domain of

sex, where animistic views of human conduct are more obtrusive, we

find that Anglican deans are making the entertaining discovery that

birth control is fully compatible with the teachings of Christianity.

Most Christians will agree that war is contrary to the “spirit of

Christ’s teachings.” When a war happens to be in progress, they give no

objective evidence that this conviction differentiates their conduct in

any way from that of people who are not in the least interested in the

spirit of Christ’s teaching. An exception might here be made in favour

of the Quakers. The Society of Friends, the only religious body which

engaged the respect of Voltaire, have shown so little disposition to

proselytize that they are hardly to be looked on as a religious body.

They might with equal propriety be called an organization of persons

interested in the art of living. Significantly enough they do not call

themselves a Church.

In practice the hard and fast ethical claims of religious leaders

tend with the advancement of civilization to become less pretentious.

The details of regulating human conduct have been conceded to the

politician and the educationist, just as cosmogony has been surrendered

to the scientist. Religious organizations cling tenaciously to some

obscure transcendental sanction for the fundamental assumptions on

which the politician or educationist is expected to work, assumptions

which, as earlier remarked, seem in actual practice curiously

irrelevant to the behaviour of their devotees. The increasing vagueness

which surrounds the nature of “revelation” in the teachings of Liberal

Churchmen renders the task of making this sanction communicable one

of overwhelming difficulty. In relation to human conduct there is

obviously a large domain of questions on which rational discourse is

possible, in so far as the fundamental assumptions are agreed upon

by all parties. In this sense ethics belongs to the public world and

ethics and politics are the same thing. There still remain private

differences with regard to the premises. The Roundheads realized that

transcendental ethics cannot be made the subject of argument. They

acted intelligibly on the assumption that the only answer to the Divine

Right of Kings was to make a spectacle of the head of Charles Stuart to

Gods and men.

When Professor Eddington employs the term mystical experience

indifferently for æsthetic and religious sentiments, he is perfectly

justified in so far as the ultimate constituents of religion, those

residues of religious belief which have survived the secularization

of social life and the advancement of scientific knowledge, belong

to the private worlds. From a purely individualistic standpoint the

“religious” satisfaction that the Liberal theologian derives from the

crude teleology of the Chaldæan mythos is difficult to distinguish from

the artistic satisfaction sought by others in the vague teleology of

Wordsworth’s _Tintern Abbey_. Regarded from a social angle there is a

profound difference between the religious and the artistic experience.

Because of that difference Professor Eddington’s conclusion that there

is nothing in the outcome of scientific enquiry to prevent a reasonable

man from entertaining religious beliefs is a profoundly misleading one.

When Professor Eddington speaks of religious experience he clearly

means something which belongs to himself privately. When the vast

majority of people speak of religion, they mean a body of beliefs which

can be transmitted through the medium of discourse like scientific

beliefs. Far from being regarded like artistic preferences as a private

affair of the individual, such beliefs are promoted by exceedingly

powerful organizations which still exercise an immense effect on social

behaviour. This influence takes the form of interference on the part of

the Churches in every attempt to encourage birth control, to promote

true information about sex among the young or to humanize the divorce

laws. The scientific philosopher is entitled to his own private mythos

with which no sensible people would wish to interfere, provided that

he does not pester his fellows with it. It is still permissible to ask

whether he is justified in employing language in such an equivocal

manner that his words will be used, when he must know they will be

used, to give all the weight of a distinguished reputation to those

forces of social organization which in the past have exercised a

constant restraint on the freedom of scientific enquiry and do at

present exert a tremendous influence upon the shaping of human conduct.

That the distinction we have drawn above between the religious and

the æsthetic is the significant one for the purpose of ordinary

usage is easily seen by considering the dislike that some people

entertain for pork. In a Gentile this is an æsthetic attitude. In the

Jew it is a religious one. The thesis that artistic values, or more

generally what Professor Eddington calls the mystical experience,

belong to the private world requires an important qualification. It

does not imply that Art cannot be made the subject of discussion. A

mechanistic philosophical outlook is often stigmatized on account of

its supposed dullness, and shunned because it seems to leave no place

for after-dinner conversation. This is not so. The mechanistic outlook

does not imply the end of æsthetic criticism. It merely insists that

such criticism shall conform to the standards of the public world.

There is abundance of fascinating problems dealing with the orientation

of human interest to particular objects which come within the scope

of æsthetic criticism. The theory of a public world which has been

developed elsewhere leaves open the possibility that we may one day

have genuinely scientific knowledge about these things. If that day

comes, we shall be able to argue about art and ethics without losing

our tempers. As the behaviouristic standpoint encroaches on the field

of art criticism, it is probable that the nice distinction between

those matters of taste which we call æsthetic values and those which we

call ethical sanctions will seem more arbitrary than the advocates of

Art for Art’s sake postulate.

The conflict between religion and science tends to be obscured by the

circumstance that the official apologists of the former, if they are

well-educated persons, state their case in such a way as to convey

the impression that they only claim that their view of human destiny

is a permissible one. This does not alter the fact that religious

leaders both of the right and left wing _behave_ on the assumption

that their views have a universal sanction. In very few parts of the

English-speaking world is it possible for a child to go to school

without being taught the tenets of some religious body. One does not

notice that Liberal theologians who state their case on the frankly

private basis of mystical experience are much more sympathetic than

Fundamentalists to the legitimate claims of the agnostic parent who

wishes his child to have a secular education. The term religion cannot

be detached in its objective, or in the terminology of these essays its

_public_, aspect from _organization_. Professor Eddington has justified

his right to a “mystical experience.” He has not proved his claim to

have a _religion_ as the average parent understands that term. If the

scientist uses the term _religion_ for something different, knowing

that his words will be used by religious leaders to reinforce their

claims to a universal sanction for their own “mystical experiences,”

the secularist parent may legitimately feel that the scientist is not

giving him a square deal as a fellow citizen.

§3

We must attribute to its long association with theology the idea that

philosophy deals with something mysteriously called _Reality_, lying

outside the secular province of science. The term Reality has acquired

the value of magical gesture in academic philosophy. Its everyday

use as a measure of the intensity of one’s conviction throws a good

deal of light on what is meant when it is used to define the goal

of philosophy. To the introvert the private world is most _real_. To

those who have a more socialized attitude to experience the public

world of science is most _real_. The fundamental difference that

exists between the introvert and the extrovert type of philosophy

is not abolished by introducing the word reality into the language.

It is partly because the term “external world” has been used with

more emphasis on its “reality” than on its communicability that I

have preferred to speak of a _public world_. The classification of

different experiences as external or internal is less important than

the recognition that some are communicable and others less so. In

this nomenclature scientific beliefs are distinguished especially by

their _publicity_. The fundamental distinction between the domain of

intellectual public enterprise and intellectual private enterprise

is just as valid, whether we approach the question from the frankly

solipsistic standpoint adopted by Professor Eddington on p. 268 of his

Gifford Lectures or the equally explicit objective idealism of p. 272

of the same work.

In my undergraduate days there was a legend of an eminent philosopher

and a Fellow of Trinity. Returning to his room in the early hours

of the morning after a liberal potation of audit ale, he lay down

upon the hearth-rug, covering himself with one of the large shallow

footbaths which were still used by all classes of academic society.

When his bedmaker arrived a little later, he explained that he was an

oyster, and raised objections to any one tampering with his shell.

I do not know whether the story is true, or whether the philosopher

was a solipsist. I presume that in the course of the same day, he

realized that his experience of the footbath had a more extended

significance than his experience of the oyster shell. If he were a

solipsist and decided to remain such after the incident in question,

he was presumably forced to recognize from Audit eve onwards, that

certain ingredients of his consciousness had a more permanent

status than others. If human beings exist only in my own individual

“consciousness,” they constitute necessary points of reference in

classifying other types of experience. The distinction between

_the_ public world and _my_ private world does not uniquely owe its

usefulness or significance to any assumption concerning the existence

of a reality external to my own consciousness. The important feature

about the world construction of science is not its externality but its

communicability. Communicability remains a perfectly definite basis

for the classification of beliefs, even if I choose to deny that other

human beings have an independent existence.

In secret the individualist is entitled to cherish the belief that his

own private world is more “real” than the public world of science. One

suspects that Mr. Sullivan does so. Professor Eddington is evidently

worried because he finds himself doing so. Under the influence of

love or alcohol we have all been solipsists at some time or other. As

Professor Eddington has lucidly stated in a passage quoted earlier in

this essay, so soon as we engage in public discourse we are compelled

to seek for a neutral ground. We agree to leave our private world

behind. To make discourse possible we accept the neutral ground as

the real thing. This neutral ground is the public world of science.

The idea that philosophy is more fundamental than science has arisen

through the absent-mindedness of philosophers. This permits them

to overlook the fact that there cannot be philosophy unless there

are philosophers. As soon as more than one individual begins to

philosophize the search for a neutral ground becomes a necessity of

social intercourse. From a social point of view the neutral ground is

the only thing which can be spoken of as real. Although philosophers

often try to give the impression that human beings exist in virtue

of the fact that there is such a thing as philosophy, it is more

sensible to hold that philosophy exists in virtue of the fact that

there are human beings. Because philosophers are themselves members

of human society, the proper goal of philosophy must be the search

for propositions that have the property of _publicity_ or socialized

reality.

The recognition of this restores to philosophy an intelligible

objective. From the point of view of the average person the philosopher

is “a blind man in a dark room chasing a black cat that isn’t there.”

The contempt of the plain man is partly justifiable, not because

the plain man is entitled to a plain answer to every question he

propounds, not because philosophers are blind, but because it is

waste of time to chase the cat, if there is really no cat to chase.

Traditional philosophy wedded to dogmatic theology has always assumed

that the cat is there to chase. Of late years the cat of traditional

philosophy, like the cat of _Alice in Wonderland_, has been gradually

disappearing. For the purpose of apologetics there is little left

of it but its smile. There have been philosophers who have been

content to admit their blindness and refrain from putting forward

any project to bell the cat. Of such was David Hume. It is now a

hundred and fifty years since Hume was buried. This may be why he is

recognized as an authentic philosopher. Those whose studies lead them

to entertain views somewhat similar to those of Hume are more usually

called anthropologists, physicists, physiologists, economists or

generically experts, while they remain alive. The grudging benediction

accorded to Hume’s remains by traditional philosophers is not wholly

due to a conventional respect for those who have departed. Hume

divested natural philosophy of some of the pretensions which it had

imbibed from its association with scholasticism. Philosophers with

an anti-scientific bias have chosen to regard this as an affront to

science. The scientist looking back over a century and a half of

unparalleled progress has no need to regard it as such. On the other

hand the scope of “moral” philosophy has dwindled since Hume’s time.

Psychology, until our own generation a branch of moral philosophy, is

clamouring to be recognized as a science. Anthropology has undertaken

the task of elucidating by painstaking observation those aspects of

human behaviour which are _publicly_ connected with what Professor

Eddington _privately_ speaks of as the “mystical experiences.” It may

be true that scientists in our generation are less outspoken than

Huxley and Tyndall in their criticism of traditional philosophy. It

may be true that those scientists who enter the field of philosophical

discussion often do so with the aim of reinforcing the beleaguered

battalions of the apologists of dogma. It is doubtful whether there was

ever a time in the history of western Europe when a secular outlook was

more widespread, and when the hope of finding a rational basis for a

universal religion was less forlorn.

When philosophers speak of a rational basis for scientific belief, they

seem to imply that the word rational can only signify that which is

evident independently of experience. It is profoundly doubtful whether

we can form any judgment about such a question. If it is possible to

arrive at a decision of this kind, I suspect that the solution will

come from those who study the behaviour of infants and the history of

science. There seems to be little hope of obtaining a solution from

introspective philosophers. In the meantime science will continue to

progress, whether the belief that relations between experience can be

ascertained is a rational one or is itself an outcome of experience,

whether the public world is the actual world or a shadow world,

whether the conclusions of science appeal to common sense or seem more

incredible than fairy tales. In a machine-made civilization however

unpalatable to common sense the conclusions of science may prove, the

future of science is assured.

In the philosophy of Hume we find the pragmatic justification of

science first stated explicitly. “To philosophize,” according to Hume,

“is nothing essentially different from reasoning on common life.”

Kant’s anxiety to give scientific enquiry a “rational” sanction was

based on the frank recognition that Hume’s scepticism threatened the

future of moral philosophy more than the future of science. Yet Kant

himself could not escape from the pragmatic criterion of publicity,

in asserting the superiority of his own system to that of Plato, who

“abandoning the world of sense, because of the narrow limits it sets to

the understanding... did not reflect that he made no real progress by

all his efforts, for he met with no resistance which might serve him

for a support, as it were, whereon to rest, and on which he might apply

his powers.”

In accepting Hume’s critique of traditional rationalism and attempting

to reinstate moral philosophy on the same footing of social convenience

as natural science, the modern pragmatists have proved more than they

intended. By insisting on the temperamental basis of philosophical

belief, pragmatism has robbed moral philosophy of all claim to

universality; and implicitly relegated it to the status of an art.

James believed that the doctrine of immortality is a physiological

necessity for some people. For others it is evidently not. Some people

anticipate with gratification an eternity of hymn singing. Others

shudder at the fate of the Struldbrugs. Both those who do find it

necessary to believe in immortality, and those who do not, live to-day

as citizens of a society whose amenities are the fruit of scientific

knowledge. In a machine-made civilization the amenities provided by

science are a necessity to every one. It is necessary to live in order

to philosophize. When the philosopher has finished all that he has to

say about the Nature of Life, it is the biologist who is called in by

his relatives to certify that he is legally dead. The universality

of science transcends in a very practical sense those differences of

temperament which determine the predilections of moral philosophers.

Scientific hypothesis makes social activity possible.

XI. PRIVACY, PUBLICITY, AND EDUCATION

“Nothing does more harm in unnerving men for their duties in the

present, than the attention devoted to the points of excellence

in the past as compared with the average failure of the present

day.”--Whitehead, _Science and the Modern World_

§1

Two conclusions, it seems to me, can now be drawn from the progress of

science. One is that, since we can never know everything we should like

to know, every individual has a right to his own private world. The

other is that there is no excuse for the sophisticated person refusing

to recognize where his private world ends and the domain of social

knowledge or the public world begins. From the first it follows that

there is no necessary antagonism between the claims of science and art

in a modern theory of education. From the second it follows that true

education is necessarily secular. It is generally agreed that education

includes something more than vocational training. Modern industry

offers to the majority of people the prospect of more opportunities for

cultivated leisure. It is arguable on the other hand that as time goes

on work may become more rather than less monotonous for most people.

Training of the individual to use his leisure in ways which will

not bring him into conflict with his neighbours provides a possible

basis for the public discussion of cultural education in what may be

called its æsthetic aspect. The Theory of the Public World does not

necessarily imply that such discussion is valueless. It does not lead

to the conclusion that the æsthetic side of education is unimportant.

It does necessitate a reconsideration of the attitude which the teacher

should be encouraged to adopt. A modern theory of education should

begin by defining the respective spheres of _privacy_ and _publicity_.

I shall illustrate what I mean by privacy with special reference to

the teaching of poetry in the school. I can see no good reason why

a child should be expected to like Keats’ _Ode to a Nightingale_. I

can see excellent reasons why he should know that it was written, and

where to find it. One of the characters in a play by Eugene O’Neill

is made to say: “I love dynamos. I love to hear them sing. They’re

singing all the time about everything in the world.” Mrs. Fife was an

American. She had almost certainly never heard a nightingale sing. In

England, where the nightingale is an indigenous species, its overrated

vocal performances are hardly less familiar to the average child. To

the majority of people brought up from childhood in urban surroundings

dynamos are closer to Nature. They are things that they can see and

hear. Churchyard owls and beds of asphodel belong to books rather than

to life. For the average citizen it may be valuable to know that the

word Hippocrene does not mean the same thing as hippopotamus. From

every point of view enlarging the vocabulary is an important part of

education. Enlarging the vocabulary and developing an interest in

literature as a means to cultivated leisure in adult life are entirely

separate issues.